Saturday, July 26, 2008

New York Trip Day Four

Day four. June 8th, 2008

This was one of our favorite days of the trip because we got to play with Puerto Rican Superheroes! Okay, not really, but it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, where all of the Peurto Ricans from the city and surrounding areas come into Manhattan and take over (literally). My brother warned us that it was probably going to be one of the worst days in NY because they are everywhere- and boy, he wasn't joking!

There were some touristy things that we wanted to do that my brother didn't want to do (really he just wanted to relax by himself for a while), so we headed out on our own.

We started out the day by heading to Central Park. This is was our first encounter with the Puerto Rican parade and where Brian coined the term "Puerto Rican Superhero". Many of the parade attendees wore Puerto Rican flags as capes, so it only seemed natural to call them that. We got to Central Park and walked around a bit and realized it was very hot and we had forgotten the battery to our old "big" camera, so we made a quick stop at home and then headed back out.

We went back down to Rockefeller Center and headed to the "Top of the Rock". This is an observation deck at the top of 30 Rockefeller Center (you know, where the sitcom "30 Rock" takes place) that has better views than the Empire State Building, so we chose to do this (and not go to the Empire State Building- maybe another time). You can see Central Park really well (which I guess you can't see from Empire State) and you also have a great view of the Empire State Building, even the Statue of Liberty. All of our "Top of the Rock" pics can be found here.

Afterwards we were hungry for lunch and we saw a bunch of people in line at a street vendor selling greek food (gyros, falafel, chicken and rice, etc. ) for really cheap, so we joined in. Let me tell you, "street meat" (as my brother later told us it was called) is the way to go for a good cheap meal in NY. It is actually very good.

After that we tried to go to the Nintendo Store, which is right in the Rockefeller Center area, but all the roads were blocked off. Yup, you guessed it- they were blocked off because of Puerto Rican Superhero Day! So instead we saw a Best Buy and went there looking for the Wii Fit. They ending up having it, which was actually better because I had coupons and a gift certificate I could use. They didn't have a bag to carry it in, so they wrapped it in black "plastic wrap" so at people couldn't see what it was. After that we headed home and finally went to Pinkberry with my brother for an afternoon snack. It was delicious. You pick a type of frozen yogurt (plain, coffee or green tea) and then you pick toppings you want on it. They have different fruits (raspberries, black berries, kiwi) or candy (chocolate chips, reeses), different cereals (granola, captain crunch) and nuts. It was really good and they should open up here in Kansas City. I really can't get my point across here ... Pinkberry is really good and you should partake at your first opportunity!

For dinner we decided to go back to Chinatown to a really great, dim sum restaurant called Dim Sum Go Go.

Neither Brian nor I had ever had dim sum, so this was a new experience. It was really good, except the waiter for some reason never wanted to serve me (he didn't bring me beer at first, he didn't bring me a glass for water or a glass for sake), I don't know what was up with that. Pretty much dim sum is a lot of different "appetizers" or "tapas" that are dumplings. I don't think you could eat a ton of them. Maybe you would get some as an appetizer and then get a full plate of something else for your main meal. But we tried a lot of different stuff and it was all very good. It was a fun experience. We even tried this odd crunchy fungus (the white thing in the center of the upper right dish below) ... it was very odd!

After dinner we went home, looked at pics, relaxed, and went to the roof and took pics of ourselves. We finally went to bed, not looking forward to only having one day left in NYC.

1 comment:

  1. Too bad you didn't make it to 30 Rockerfeller Plaza. That would have been sweet.

    I 3> Tina Fey.